"An accident doesn't define a rider - their recovery does."
An old riding adage.
I have been conspicuous by my absence on this blog in recent months and for very good reason. I had a bad riding accident, leading to quite serious injuries. I'm no stranger to coming off a horse. I've had many falls over the past four decades that I have been riding, and I accept it as being a natural aspect of equestrianism. It is, after all, a high risk sport.
I started riding when I was ten years old and in the years since, I have landed myself in A&E on several occasions. Up until now, the worst injury I sustained was a fractured rib when a pony called Brandysnap threw me onto a stone wall when I was eighteen. Other than that, I've had strains and sprains, or bruises from bites and kicks and falls, but nothing else. Nothing that has prevented me from getting straight back on again. Until a few weeks ago.
Back at the beginning of March, I went riding as usual. It's been a very bad winter for mud this year and the ground has been difficult for months. Maybe that was a factor. Because the truth is, I still don't know exactly what happened. I was riding my usual horse who has a reputation for being a bit clumsy. He is a beautiful and gentle-spirited equine, with absolutely no malice in him. I loved riding him, though his clumsiness means that he can be challenging.
He has slipped in the mud before, leading me to injure my coccyx on the cantle. That was back in Oct/Nov time last year. I took a month off to heal, then got back in the saddle, happy to be back and riding him once more. Anyone can slip in the mud, even a horse. On the whole, I enjoyed our rides, especially hacking him in the woods. He loved the forest tracks and would swing along at a nicely balanced gallop. He never once slipped with me in the woods. He never tripped over the tree roots strewn across the forest paths. He felt sure-footed and safe up there. When schooling him however, he was constantly tripping and slipping, partly because the weather had turned the surface into a bit of a quagmire. It was in the school that I injured my coccyx. And it was there that I had my accident.
I hadn't been in the saddle long, but he was nicely warmed up. We went into a good working trot ready to transition into a canter, in preparation for jumping. Obviously, I was posting as we trotted, then suddenly I felt him trip. He does that a lot, but usually he catches himself and we just carry on. However, on this occasion he didn't manage to recover. The feel of a horse dropping like a stone underneath you is pretty horrific. Never in all my years of riding has a horse fallen beneath me, nor have I witnessed it happen to any of my equestrian friends either.
But on that particular morning - he dropped and I remember thinking, "Shit! He's going down!" His forelegs tangled underneath him, his head and neck bowed low - he didn't so much fall, as plummet. The momentum of the speed we were going, and the loss of the horse beneath me, meant that the trajectory threw me clean over his head. I have been thrown over a mounts head before, a few times, but usually there is something to break my fall - be it a show-jump, a fence or the wall that fractured my rib!
This time there was nothing to break my fall. I remember the sight of the ground coming up to meet me really, really fast - and I was flying head first into it. I tried to curl up to protect my neck and head, but there wasn't time. I hit the floor - my arms tucked underneath me, as the solid brim of my riding hat plunged into the ground, protecting my face but reverberating back against the bridge of my nose. The impact of the fall shuddered through my neck, shoulders and collar bones. I felt both my wrists break as I landed.
As I rolled to sit up, I immediately began to hyperventilate and I had the worst nose-bleed of my life. Luckily the brim of my riding hat had saved me from breaking my nose too, but I knew my wrists were basically...well, fucked, to put it bluntly. I could see the horse was fully recovered and stood quietly watching from the sidelines. I felt relieved that he wasn't broken - that his legs were good and he wasn't about to get shot by a vet. That was a big relief to me. He was safe. It was me who was broken.
Obviously I had gone into shock by this point. I was in a such a broken state that I had to be cut out of my clothes. Again, being so injured that you have to be cut out of your clothes is a horrific experience. The stable girls cutting off my gloves and snipping back the sleeves of my riding top, revealed the extent of my injuries, because both my wrists were all bent out of shape. I couldn't hold so much as a tissue, so one of the girls rang my mum, who came and drove me to the hospital. In hindsight, they really should have rung an ambulance for me, but they didn't. I sat in A&E for three hours, without any pain meds - even having xrays with no pain relief offered at all. Eventually we had to ask for some meds, to which the nurse apologized profusely and said I should have been given pain relief before the xrays.
My mum and I spent the whole day in A&E, while they looked after me and came up with a treatment plan. I had a lovely ginger-haired doctor who told me that my wrists were so badly broken, they'd basically been shattered by the impact. In short, they had crumbled in a concertina effect. At this point I cried like a baby and told him "But I'm a writer! I write books for a living! When can I type again?" He said that he was going to put on temporary casts to stabilize the wrists, but because they didn't have a bed for me that night, I would have to come back the next morning to have emergency surgery on both wrists. He doped me up on morphine and gave me gas and air while he and a male nurse used brute strength to try and pull my wrists straight, so that another nurse could apply the casts. He told me he'd see me the next day and that they would fix me properly, so that I could both write, and hopefully ride again, in time.
The next day I had surgery to reconstruct my shattered wrists, rebuilding them with metal plate implants, held in place with screws. I was in theatre for four and a half hours. Laid on the bed, being wheeled from theatre up to the ward, I saw the ginger-haired doctor again in the corridor. I called out to him "Ginger!" I said. I'd forgotten his name. He did tell me, but I still can't recall it. All I remember is his kindness, making me feel calm and safe.
"How are you feeling?" he asked me.
"Happy." I said. I meant high.
"Good! We like it when patients are happy!"
"I think I'm on drugs. I've never been on drugs before. I quite like it, but don't tell anyone!" I giggled like a maniac.
He laughed, looked at my chart and said "Yes, you're on some very strong pain relief. It's going to make you feel very sleepy soon, but I'll pop into the ward to see you before I go, okay?"
He was a lovely doctor and he did indeed pop up to the ward to see me before he went home from his night shift, but I was fast asleep by then, so I missed him. The nurse told me he'd been though, so I know he kept his word.
They kept me in hospital for a while, because initially I couldn't do anything for myself. I couldn't feed myself, I had to drink through a straw and I needed the nurses to help me with everything. This is because I had dressings from my elbows to my fingers and I couldn't hold anything or use my hands at all. When they discharged me, it was to my mum's house because I still needed lots of assistance, so she picked up the nursing duties where the hospital staff left off. I couldn't have got through the past few months without my mum. She's been a real brick and we've been joking that I finally became a boomerang kid at the age of 50! We've had such a laugh, living together again. We watched the whole of The Crown seasons 1-5, the first series of The Gilded Age and lots of Gogglebox. It was such fun. Like Charles Dickens said "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".
I stayed with my mum for two months, then finally came home to live alone, once I could look after myself and do most things for myself again. It's not over yet though. I still have to wear wrist splints when I go out, to protect my wrists, I still have to go back to the hospital for regular physiotherapy and check ups, I have physio exercises that I have to do three times a day and medication to take. My recovery is going to take months, until well into the autumn, but I have surprised myself, my mother and the doctors with my resilience. While I haven't fully recovered yet and there are still lots of things I'm not yet allowed to do, driving for instance, or lifting things, I have bounced back quite quickly. I'm proud of myself for that.
I even managed to get my Oxford University assignments written, with two semi-broken wrists all bandaged up after surgery! And they passed too! I'm now well into Trinity term and I am thoroughly enjoying the course and my studies with Oxford so far. It is proving to be a great experience.
My editor and publisher have also been fantastic, sending me cards and chocolates as I recovered and telling me that they were happy to hold off commissioning until I was well enough to write again. That day came last week and I now have commissions for new books to write and to be getting on with. I couldn't wish for a better editor. She really is the best. They've also asked me to write an extended edition of one of my books, for a special silk-bound gift-edition, which is such a thrill. So three months after my accident, I'm back at my desk and soon to begin writing new books! Now that's bounce-back-ability!
In terms of riding, I'm going to be out of action for a good while yet. It may be that my wrists are never strong enough to hold a head-strong horse, or that I never regain enough flexibility in them to carry my own weight for the dismount - and if I can't get off, then I shouldn't be getting on! It could be that I'm unable to ride at all, because of those injuries. I certainly won't be able to ride again for the remainder of this year. Hopefully, if I work at my physio I will get my wrists back to a place where riding is an option for me once more. The doctors certainly seem optimistic about it, if a little cautious in saying yes or no. I must confess that part of me is already itching to get back in the saddle!
But I am also acutely aware of how very lucky I have been. Being thrown from a horse at that speed and at that trajectory means that I was lucky not to break my neck. I'm not exaggerating here. This is how riders finish up in wheelchairs - or dead.
Just this weekend a professional rider was killed at a horse show in Devon. So a fall isn't due to a lack of riding ability and injury isn't just a case of having 'soft bones'. Its a dangerous sport and the risks should never be underestimated.
I have been very, very lucky. My riding hat, with it's solid brim, saved me from a broken nose and a more serious head injury, leaving me with only a mild concussion, two black eyes and a bad nose-bleed. My broken wrists are what saved my neck, literally sacrificing themselves instead of my vertebrae. My mood dips when I think of what could have happened to me, so I try to look on the bright side. Its early days and I'm still recovering - mentally, emotionally and physically. My wrists have a long way to go before they are fully healed and fully functional. My collar bones, although they were not broken, now have a nasty habit of painful clicking that they didn't have before. I still have dizzy spells that I didn't have before too. All this has added yet another layer to the PTSD and I do have flashbacks and bad dreams about the accident and the fall. I am not unscathed by it, but nor am I completely dejected by it either. I'm too much of a Bruce for that!
I will just have to see how it goes. I certainly won't be back in the saddle until next year at the earliest, and I'll be looking for a different yard when I do go back! So for now, riding will have to take a back seat, while I focus on my Oxford studies and writing my new books. It has been quite an adventure though! And I lived to tell the tale 😃
My riding hat certainly saved my life, so if you ride, make sure you always wear one, with the straps secured properly.
BB Marie x
